Many people have said that tapping the camera on the battery door side of the case may solve the problem.. but maybe only for a little while.. and if you bang too hard you can break your LCD and cause other problems. I always warn people about banging on their camera, but if you want to try it then it's up to you.

I can ask a friend of mine who is a certified Sony repair tech, but I'm sure he will tell me it's lens.

A couple solutions would be to either buy a defective camera online and make one good camera from the two if you can do that sort of thing yourself, or secondly have it repaired by somebody.

Don't bother trying to send the camera to Sony (though you can call them and verify what I'm about to say) because they will want $150+ to do the repair for you. Sony parts are not cheap to buy from them.

I know of one very affordable digital camera repair business... because I own it. The name is Darntoothysam, feel free to check us out, we are on that big auction website also (I dont plug their name for free), our seller ID is 'darntoothysam'. If you Google "darntoothysam" you will find us.

We have your repair listed as a package in our store for about $70. This covers a new lens, and return shipping of your camera! We even give a 45 day warranty on parts and labor. If you think you can use us then please check us out, even if you need to ask more questions then please feel free to contact me.

There is no reset button, the focus lens in the lens assembly is sticking and out of sync , therefore on powering up the lens cannot initialise ( which is why it zooms in/out repeatedly. You will have to disassemble the lens to wind down the arm to its correct position.
if your in the UK I can help you out. Pm at kiddo242@hotmail.com if you need help or guidance .
regards
jim

2) When you connect to the PC and switch on, Click on Start - "My Computer". Your hard drives and disk drives should appear in the window.

Have a good look, is there a new drive, it may be called Sony, or USB mass storage device it may just be called drive E or F.

If so double click on that drive, if there's a folder there, double click on there, with luck you should see your pictures, that new drive is really your camera.

You should be able to move pictures by copy and pasting. Once copied you can deleted them from your camera.

3) You can buy a device called a "Memory card reader" Make sure its good for sony memory sticks.
You take you card from you camera and put it in the card reader. Then, once plugged into a USB port its just like another HDD as described in 2.

4) I should have said this first, try another USB port if you can, it my just be dust in the port making life hard............